Hammer, Zirkel, Davidstern: Das gestorte Verhaltnis der DDR zu Zionismus und Staat Israel (review)

On February 24, 1948 SED Politbüro member Paul Merker wrote in the party newspaper Neues Deutschland that “the establishment of a Jewish state within a part of Palestine, with its progressive ideas and the socialist aspirations of its working class movement, will not remain without consequences for the reactionary feudalist Arab kings, princes, and muftis.” Merker emphasized that the Soviet Union will “even permit aliyah, the migration of Soviet Jews to Palestine. The leaders of Soviet Jewry from now are going to be in direct contact with the Jewish center in Palestine.”

However, Merker’s high hopes turned to disappointment as he was, in 1952, expelled from the party as an alleged agent of the Zionist imperialists and subsequently imprisoned; three years later he was also condemned in a secret trial. He remained confined until the summer of 1956.

Why this has happened has been analyzed by an ever-growing armada of books, essays, and newspaper articles. In contrast, the complex connections and effects of Stalinist antisemitism in the Soviet Union regarding the policies of East Germany have not attracted as much scholarly attention. Angelika Timm’s detailed study addresses this relative neglect. Her well researched and well argued book stands every chance of becoming a standard work on this subject.

The author, a former assistant professor of Hebrew Studies at Humboldt University and now working at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, has labored toward a more balanced and nuanced view of East Germany with regard to Israel in the several years prior to the implosion of state socialism in 1989. In addition to the substantial number of her own studies in the field, Timm has acquired a positive reputation as translator and editor of Israeli prose. Her present work ranges from the foundations of the German Communist policy towards the Jewish question, the issue of reparation and restitution of the first post-war years, the mutual perceptions—including the lack thereof—of the GDR and Israel, to the path of the attempted cooperation in 1989/90. Timm’s study is richly grounded in the relevant sources, stemming from archival holdings in Germany, Israel, and North America. She has worked her way through the scholarly literature in German, English, and Hebrew. There are, as is expected by a study of this scope, some minor errors, such as three titles within the bibliography, which have mistakenly been attributed to the reviewer, as opposed to their real authors Jack Jacobs and Wolfgang Kiessling.

Timm puts the position of the GDR with regard to Israel, as well as—to a lesser extent—the relationship of Israel toward East Germany, within a larger context of the global conflicts between the USA, the Soviet Union, and the Arab countries, mainly Egypt and Syria. Timm does not neglect West Germany, given that the Near East policies of the GDR unfolded within the pressures from Moscow and competition from Bonn. “There was no (East German) foreign and trade policy solely toward Israel. . . . There was no need to deal with Israel in a more detailed fashion until the establishment of formal diplomatic ties in the late 1980’s. In any event, fundamental foreign policy decisions were not made by the (East German) Ministry for Foreign Affairs, but rather within the SED apparatus” (p. 49).

Timm stresses more strongly than other authors the fundamental importance of the questions of reparations as the key point of departure for the relationship between Israel and the GDR. On that complex issue, she has, parallel to this book, written a study in English: Jewish Claims against East Germany: Moral Obligations and Pragmatic Policy (Budapest: Central European Press, 1998, 291 pp.). In a telegram to the Communist Party of Israel, Wilhelm Pieck, East Germany’s president, accepted Germany’s collective guilt toward the Jewish people immediately after his election, and contrary to future statements and positions (p. 93). Timm...